Fairy Tales
by Feather
Summary: Angst///Contemplating suicide, Hermioine leafs through an old notebook and is forced to reconsider what she is about to do.


Title: Fairy Tales

Rating: PG

Category: Harry Potter

Genre: Angst

Author's notes: I try to get at least one piece out a month, but I had no good ideas until early this morning, and I didn't want to push the process of thinking out the story and writing it on an idea I didn't think would produce a good finished product.

The rating is here for some suicidal thoughts from Hermione; I didn't ever think that I'd write something like this ever, least of all for Hermione, but I was rereading _Forever Rain_, a piece I wrote a while ago, and I thought that this might be a good continuation of it. So this might be considered a sequel, but I'm not sure. It might make a bit more sense if you read that first, but it's not essential to enjoy (or dislike) this story. Dedications on this go to Emeril: I was watching Food Network when struck with this inspiration ^_~. Love always, Feather =^-^=

*

Quill poised above the paper, Hermione Granger contemplated the way to begin her memoirs, her final words to the world. Just a year ago, even six months prior to these final moments, words would have seemingly dripped from her pen; it would have seemed that she had such an urgent message to spread about the world that the words couldn't wait for a proper moment to come out of her mind. Now, though, now no more words would come to her mind; even they had left her now. Idly sketching various ways to begin in her head, she subconsciously wrote, 'Hermione Granger never intended to become a bitter person.'

Hermione arched an eyebrow and set the quill down, expressing the most emotion she had in weeks with one single gesture. Obvious discomfort was etched in her brow, and annoyance with herself was clear. _Now you're referring to yourself in third person; you've reached an all-time low, Granger._ However, almost as though she was compelled by magic, she let her hand pick up the quill, and hover above a bottle of ink for a moment. Instantly, she plunged it suddenly and quite forcefully into the bottle, and started to neatly continue her memoirs.

'The irony never failed to escape her attention; she had always told herself that she would never allow herself to become bitter, or to cut herself away from the world. She knew that she had quite sharp wits to her, and knew that it might be easy to become so absorbed in something that she would lose her like for human contact.

'Sadly, however, she had become bitter, and she hadn't even finished school by the time she was so totally immersed in her quest to capture every piece of knowledge. She forgot about the only people that had looked past her intelligence, looked past her tendency to want to share everything she knew, and had made her feel more than a ready library for any person who wanted any information. She had always enjoyed school work immensely, and often carried out the assignments much further than the professor had intended; now she took many more classes than would fit into a normal schedule and had taken up the timeturner device that allowed her to relive many hours over and over.

'And sometimes, though she didn't realize it, she would stop in the hallways to catch her breath from running to and from her classes, and she would look longingly at those two people, her best friends. They somehow seemed so much different from when she had run about the school causing mischief with them; when she was actually in a class with them, and then paired up with them, the reunions were bittersweet. 

'Because as hard as she had tried not to become bitter, and to hold her friends so dear and close to her heart, she had lost them. And she realized that everything that she would ever attempt was useless and her vain efforts at life were futile and fruitless; she had let go of those two people, and now she couldn't ever feel the same, as free and naïve; and neither could they. She knew it was a hard lesson to learn, and that it would benefit her, but she couldn't get past it, and knew that she never would. So she wrote out her short, pathetic memoirs, and as she did so she realized that she still loved them with all of herself, because they had at one time understood her, and been there for her.

'Now they were gone. And now she is, too.'

A neutral expression was carefully balanced on her face, and as soon as she finished her words, the first in so long, she wiped off the tip of her quill and closed the bottle. Writing out her confessions had been strangely satisfying, and now she knew that this was the moment she had been stalling for so long. A thin silver blade reflected blinding moonlight, and for a second, she was regretful that she would have to leave something of such pure crystalline beauty. And a sudden wave of regret for something she had not yet done hit her hard; she would deeply miss the low echoes of a flute, the pink flush of a morning sunrise, the thin, languid movements of a cat, the laughter of Harry and Ron, the feeling of anticipation before a crucial exam, even the deep, horrible feeling of loneliness that would overtake her so often.

The world suddenly seemed delicate to Hermione, too delicate to try to touch or effect. Everything, she realized, was so delicately cast into life that if she made the slightest movements or indications of apparent change that she would throw everything completely out of balance; it was like knocking into a china cupboard, or something equally priceless, but the trapped figurines weren't pretty statuettes; they were the people that she knew cared about her, and she knew that she was a danger to those people, even if she had broken off those ties so long ago. She tore her gaze from the blade to the thick book next to it, the only journal that she had ever kept in all of her seventeen years.

Trying not to concentrate on the easy opportunity to take advantage of her mortality, she flipped through it, her gaze falling to a joyous entry from when she had written just before arriving at King's Cross station and entering a new world by stepping onto the Hogwarts Express. 'I'm so happy,' she had wrote, 'to be going to Hogwarts. Just imagine, Hermione, of all the friends you can make and everything new that you can learn. There have to be so many lessons that I'll learn there, both academic and otherwise. We're nearing the station, and I sense something large is happening, something earth-shatteringly different for me, though I can't place my finger yet on any definite change. It's a new life for me; this is the last entry from the old Hermione.' Hermione let a small smile fall upon her lips for a fraction of a second as she remembered that euphoria that had seemed so…ethereal and precious.

She turned the page, and the next entry was dated to be from the following winter, roughly six years ago. 'I've never believed in fairy tales before, deeming them fiction, but now I am starting to learn how to become a witch, fully outfitted down to my wand. The even greater magic is the powerful bond I feel between myself and my two best friends, Harry and Ron. It seems odd, but I feel as though I've spent infinity and beyond just laughing with them, sitting with them, being with them. It truly is a fairy tale, though there are some mysteries stirring.'

Hermione bit her lip, remembering the affair with the sorcerer's stone. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Hesitantly, she turned one last page before the inevitable occurred, her gaze falling upon a written quote. She remembered being so excited about finding it, being at awe of the wisdom. And once again it touched her as she read, "What if a demon were to creep after you one night in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live, must be lived by you once and again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come to you again, in all the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned, and you with it, dust of the dust!,' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you say, 'Never have I heard anything so divine,'?"  


Hermione felt her hands start to shake as she looked over at the knife, and for the first time that night, or since she had considered seriously leaving all this misery behind, she felt tears well up at the corners of her eyes. Putting a hand to her mouth to muffle her sobs, she reached for her wand, and transfigured the knife into a candle. Putting the well-worn rod of ash down, she wiped her eyes, and whispered to herself, to the world, to everyone she knew, to the silent oppressive loneliness that loomed over to her, "I'm so sorry." She again reached for her wand, muttered a spell to light the candle, and hesitantly held it to the crisp paper. The freshly inked words gleamed brilliantly in the candlelight, but were quickly consumed by the thin flame.

The fire seemed to touch her cold heart, seemed to warm up the feeling of being lost in a storm with a strong northern wind that would blow her into the fiery depths of Hell from sheer loneliness. A cloud had passed over the moon, the candle the sole light in the room, and Hermione blew it out with ragged breath. She shakily stood up, pushing the warm wax candle away from her, and left the pile of ash behind.

"It just hurts so much now," she said, still using a soft whisper, looking at where the desk was through the darkness, at that flame that had touched her and burned up her mistakes.

*

Closing notes: I hope you liked it ^^. The quote is credited to Friedrich Nietzsche. Have a nice day! Feather =^-^=


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